"Well, I'll try to find out from the neighbors what family that is, Mr. Braverman."
"Thank you. Mrs. Greenspan! If it isn't too that trouble."
That evening, however, the concert of cornet and piano went on as before.
The next day Mrs. Greenspan informed him that the player was a girl of about twenty; that her second name was Freedman; that her parents were paying for the piano “on the imstallment plan;” and that it was made by a very reputable firm
"So it is a girl," thought Max, and his heart grew warm within him.
That evening, when he sat down with his mstrument near the open window, he trembled at the mere thought of hearing the piano again. He wondered whether she would play. There was a long silence and his spirits drooped. Then he heard the faintly tinkling keys, his heart leaped, and there was harmony again.
They played together, Max and the girl, and it seemed to Max that he was divining something from her music; and it seemed almost impossible to him that she should not understand from his playing something of his misery and his loneliness.
So passed a number of evenings.
He often wondered whether she thought of him as he did of her, and with what feelings she played and what she thought of him and of it all.
He got to play so softly and so well on his cornet that Mrs. Greenspan was hardly annoyed by it. It even seemed pleasant upon occasion.
II.
One evening, however, Max was _ chagrined. His playing met with no response. He persisted for a long time and then gave it up and waited. But he heard no sound.
Was it all over? A sickening feeling of the futility of everything, of ultimate loneliness, possessed him.
He paced back and forth. He paused and looked through the open window.
Poles, clothes-tines with clothes hanging from them, ugly, unornamented walls, fire-escapes filled with rags, bedding, tubs, utensils, as the case might be. And below, little yards strewed with all kinds of rubbish and debris. Everythingg seemed to symbolize and impress the despair which was in his heart.
Then he thought he would go out. But
perhaps she would come and play and he would not be there? So he waited, permitting the evening to drag away miserably.
The next day was Saturday.
He worked and was not at all anxious to have the day go quickly as he was usu- olly. He knew that in the evening, while the streets would be jammed with young men and women, the would be pining alone in the house. Nevertheless, owing to bis frequent abstractions, he almost ruined a piece of costly cloth with his shears. 5 employer would perhaps reprimand him. Let him! he would certainly show him! He was alreadyy quarrelling with tim, mentally. “You scoundrel, why don’t you pay me the four months raise you promised me? Do you think I’ve forgotten that?” he thought hotly.
When he returned, he noticed that Mrs. Greenspan seemed in pain. “A headache,” he thought. He asked her and was confirmed.
"I know it isn't from my playing this time," he said, smiling ruefully, "because I hardly played yesterday."
"Of course not! Cannot one get a headache from lots of other causes?" she asked ingenuously. But she felt relieved, for she judged from the way he spoke that she would not play that evening.
"How is your husband today?" asked Max.
“Better!” she said gratefully. This fact had elated her all day and she had beer longing to communicate it to some one who could appreciate to the full. “Extolled and blessed be the Lord, better, better! They are rude at the hospital, God bless them! They hardly let me go near him! But when they told me he was better, I wanted to kiss their hands, I was so happy! I knew he’d be better! I always had faith in our good God! I said to myself, we are in His hands! He has sustained us so long, He has been good to us thro so much trouble, He surely will not desert us now! Blessed is God!”
Max hardly heard her. He was longing to hear the piano-strains again.
The night wore away and he heard nothing. He feared the next day, Sunday. What would he do with himself on that long, blank day?
"Ah," he sighed, as he went to bed, "I will get up to-morrow and go away some-